Boston & Maine Eastern Route Progress

[jbvb]

29-Mar-11: Last night I cut out the river and glued the 'bathtubs' into place.  When dry, I cut away the stone culvert area and installed screen wire banks and embankment.



Then I got started on support for the US 1 overpass at Newburyport West, as I needed to design that before adding screen on the E. shore. Then I did the river banks.

[deemery]

Now I do too.  I will ask if there's anything special about how Modelersforum handles PNG images.

I'm inclined to think it's a common practice in forum applications to do image processing in the background.  I've noticed these delays not just here, but on RR-Line and elsewhere.   If so, it's someone being "clever" to the detriment of the user experience.  But as a class of applications, I'm not impressed with the set of forum packages I've used.  

dave

[elwoodblues]

James,

Thanks for the time and effort you are taking to re-post your construction blog.  I'm really enjoying reading it again now that I remember it from the RR Line forum, don't know why I didn't catch it the first time. 

[ACL1504]

James,

Good to see the revitalizing of the layout. The double track curve looks great.

It has been several years since I've seen screen used to scenery. Can't tell you how many times I "poked myself" using it.

Tom 

[Philip]

Nice work James! How far along are you currently? That is a very detailed pike!

Philip

[jbvb]

Thanks, Ron, Tom and Philip.   My benchwork is about 90%: the smaller peninsula in the south half of my attic remains to be built.  76 of a planned 86 turnouts are operating.  Two more signals will complete signaling the main line. I've been hosting timetable/card order operating sessions since April 2014, but only five since 2019.  Next op session will be part of the HUB High Green event May 3 and 4.

A little more than half the scenery is complete except for detailing - detailing could go on the rest of my life. The south half of the layout needs perhaps 10 more structures, all scratchbuilt.  The north half needs about 20, also scratchbuilt.  The most challenging structure is probably the complex deck truss swing bridge over the Merrimack River in Newburyport.  Paul Mallery's bridge book has a sketch, it's also visible in Google Street View as you 'drive'  south from Salisbury MA to Newburyport on US Route 1.

All will be covered as I find time to recreate my layout's RR-Line thread.

[jbvb]

Back to 2-Apr-11: Some fine Sunday in the middle of the week, I'll get down to the Newburyport Public Library and search the 1892 newspapers for an 'official' reason for that tower. Much later, one author said it was made to look like a salt marsh haystack. The 1915 valuation survey doesn't show access to it other than up a ladder and through the attic. Then there's the two small windows and the vestigial gable (if it was for a clock, it was gone by 1915). I suppose it goes to show that an architect *will* find a way to spend the budget; it's entirely covered in slate, as is the arched gable facing the tracks behind it. Luckily for me, the valuation surveyor drew it's shape in some detail, so he could figure out the volume.

3-Apr-11: I'd been thinking about "ground goop" for a while, because Savogran Wood Putty (no longer available) is my favorite scenery material but it can be tricky to mix (a sloppy mix will set up faster than plaster) and apply. I got off the dime and experimented with mixing it with sawdust and brown latex paint. All but one of my test batches set up overnight; the one that didn't probably had too much sawdust, but I'm still hoping. The one that was easiest to work with was 2 parts paint, 3 water, 4 sawdust and 8 Wood Putty. Alas, while it had a working time of an hour or more, the part that I left in the sealed tub overnight was hard as a rock next morning. I'm well along on what was 20 sq. ft of bare screen at noon Saturday.

4-Apr-11: Word was out there was steam on the Eastern route. The fans set up overlooking Little River, and waited quite a while:



It was even clean (rare in this era) but what was that funny piece of work equipment?

Before I got started on the ground goop, I did a little stonework on the Forerock bridge (built by the Eastern RR of granite slabs). There's a lot more ground goop to go, but there are also a couple of scenes I can finish and photograph. And then the odd: it's an old house, so I hear Deathwatch beetles once in a while. The previous afternoon one sounded loud and odd. I looked around and it was drumming on the roofwalk of a boxcar trying to find a mate. Evolution didn't favor that strategy, but now I've actually seen one.

10-Apr-11:  I'd applied a lot of ground cover around the 1A overpass and Little River, as well as some other areas where I had bare screen. Then I started on grass (just WS dyed sawdust for the RR-owned strip to start) and it looked like there might be a few decent photo locations:



I've returned to this place after more scenery work.  Setting lights up for better depth of field helped.

[jbvb]

4-17-2011: The bridge is a selectively-compressed model of the Rt. 1a overpass at Eastern Route MP 31.9 in Rowley MA. Per a friend who did bridge engineering for the Commonwealth, it was built in two stages: The concrete arch to the RR east was built in 1907. The road was widened in 1931 with concrete-encased beams on the west side. The line was single tracked in 1959 and is used by MBTA commuter trains to Newburyport. Freight service ended in 1983.



I scratchbuilt the bridge structure from wood (pillars, abutments) and styrene (arch, retaining walls). using Rix beams and balustrade moldings. At this point I had an article in progress, which I submitted to RMC once I got far enough along to take some "finished" photos.



That weekend was devoted to scenery work, including the greenery and fences. The photo revealed several things to fix, mostly painting the fence and abutments and trimming the copper wire holding it to the posts.

[jbvb]

5-1-2011: More scenery progress:



The future site of BEST's "Clam Box" kit had a fence and a parking area. The Atlas "post & rail" fence is about right for a roadside attraction of the era, but it needed either weathering towards gray, or white paint. Also time for  power/phone poles along the road, and solve the cable guard problem. I eventually chose to use the self-stick commercial road you can see. The color is pretty good, but the center line still isn't double yellow.



I had grass mats on order for Little River, but they didn't make a better salt marsh than fake fur. The landscape needed a little more stonework and painting and detailing the river banks first, though.

The next scene to the right (East) is the US 1 overpass, but I had gone far as I could without finalizing the design of the bridge. My friend who works for the state copied me some pictures from the archive, but there isn't a commercial path to the piers. I have yet to make four patterns and mold/cast all I'll need. I've never done that before, but much has been written about it.

I'd also done a lot of work on the High St. overpass area, but it was still bare screen then. I like how I laid it out, even though I had to compress it a lot.

[Philip]

Awesome!

I had an HO layout but could never finish it. It overwhelmed me. My closest helpers were 40 miles away and my novice plan was never realized. I have a 6 x 6 On30 that keeps me busy. One day I'll try again.

Philip

[jbvb]

Thanks, Philip.  I got my High School HO layout in my parents' home to complete track, wiring and hard-shell landforms, but then I left home for college. I dismantled it as I started work on this attic layout, and some materials got re-used.

5-May-2011: I finished installing screen on either side of High St. in Newburyport the other night, and applied wood putty glop. After I cleaned up, I shot a panorama of the north end of the attic, but something ate it between 2011 and 2025. I pulled these out of the PDF I'd made backing up RR-Line:



East Bexley and Rowley River module.



Rowley Depot module.

[jbvb]

Route 1A overpass and Little River.



Little River and Newburyport West.



High St. overpass and Washington St. grade crossing, Newburyport.

[jbvb]

Washington St. past depot site and Merrimack St to Bridge Rd., Newburyport



First temporary crossing of the future Merrimack River.

[jbvb]

22-May-2011: Most progress since my last update was non-photogenic; my drawing of Newburyport depot, foundations for structures. However, I did start the Washington St. (Newburyport) grade crossing.



I worked from standard plans published by the B&MRRHS: Two 10" planks outside each rail, one with a flangeway on the inside. I used Micro-Engineering "Micro Spikes" where the prototype installed drive screws (every 2nd or 3rd tie depending on traffic). For my code 83 rail, I chose 1/16 x 3/32 (tie stock) basswood. Closer to the layout edge, I might have shimmed .010 or .015 under it, but leaving the rails a little proud won't do any harm here.



This completed the carved wood putty stone retaining walls in the Merrimack St. area. I considered doing the High St. cut with carved styrene overlays but wound up using wood putty again.

A little later I started a thread about highway guardrails before W-section galvanized became universal:

https://modelersforum.com/index.php?topic=6910

[jbvb]

22-Sep-2011: It had been three months; in that time, I separated from my wife, my mother died and my employer spent two months in "we have to have this code frozen by Friday" mode.  But that evening some friends came over and I ran trains, and I'd been experimenting with different track plans for the GE River Works in West Lynn. The area I was considering is in red:



This one makes more work for the Lynn Switcher, because he has to pull GE's outbounds first, then come back with the inbounds. The runaround is always available for GE's 44-tonner, and it has a few more spots. But if receiving (Building 41, upper right) uses bridge plates to the 2nd track, that gets in the way of the runaround.



This one lets the Lynn Switcher set inbounds on one track and pull outbounds from the other. But if GE's 44 tonner spot cars alongside Building 30 (left top), they have to be moved before any cars can be run around. The next variation I tried was moving the left crossover to the right, between the two sharply curved tracks that go off to the rest of the plant 'behind the backdrop'.

The B&M tracks here are the prototype's arrangement: a "middle" siding, with the EB & WB mains on either side, and running tracks outside them. Staging is to the left, the West Lynn yard (4 stub tracks) is on the upper right.